(Make Time For Your Schedule Instead)
Stay with me for a moment, and you’ll see what I mean.
We so often optimize for productivity and efficiency that our schedules become overfilled, and we sacrifice what truly matters.
God, Family, and friends are gone in a moment, replaced by errands, deliverables, and a last-minute caffeine boost.
We have never had more time for nothing than now, at the peak of our productivity.
Why is it that we have “less time” for God when we need Him most?
Over the past three weeks, we’ve been exploring a profound conversation I had with Alex Jones, CEO of Hallow, the number one prayer app in the world. There was so much richness in this interaction that I have been continuously challenged, particularly regarding how I invest my time.
Given that the Kingdom of the Lord does not operate within earthly concepts, we must understand that separate principles will also govern how we submit our time to the Lord. Because we have been doing it wrong for so long, we believe the “way it’s always been done” is how things should go. But we have it backwards—all of it.
God should never be “built into our schedules”; rather, our time and checklists should be intentionally positioned around the Lord.
This nuanced perspective shift will take you from never having time for God to being the most at peace you have ever been while simultaneously still managing to wrap up everything you had to get done.
Martin Luther, a German priest and renowned theologian, reflects this perfectly in a response he once gave when asked about his daily plans:
“I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.”
Essentially, If you want to make the most of it, begin by giving the first of it to the Lord.
This right here is how the sentiment of things should be. Instead, we have been doing it wrong for too long. I believe it can be pinned to various realities; perhaps it's due to our nature to want to “see” results and be willing to sacrifice peace accordingly. Maybe it's our fear of stopping and being present.
Regardless, it's at you're at your busiest that you should realize you need time to stop, breathe, and seek the Lord.
Better put, it's at our limits that we must remember to stop making time to “pray a little” or “find God” (He’s always been there, at the ready). Instead, we must realize that it's our schedules that need to take the back seat.
I am a strong proponent for squeezing out that last bit of juice and doing the difficult work, and I agree with Austin Kleon, a New York Times best-selling author, when he writes, “You find time the same place you find spare change- in the nooks and crannies. You find it in the cracks between the big stuff—your commute, your lunch break, the few hours after your kids go to bed.”
As such, I believe you can build masterpieces out of spare parts.
Working on a skill or goals in those in-between moments will begin to add up and eventually make a difference. But it isn't in the rush between classes or the commute to work that our relationship with Christ will fall back on when the roads get rocky. These aren't the bones of it but the flesh, the add-ons.
The actual structure of our relationship with Christ is something we must set at the base to later build these other moments into. We need to stop trying to “only” stuff God into these and instead reverse our thinking and realize what we should be making time for are the errands, not the Lord.
And while God is ever present and can be found in those quiet and tender happenings. I think we have been trying too hard and have relapsed into “only” finding God there.
What would our lives be like if instead of “making time” for God, we “made time” for errands, work, and hobbies?
Yes, God has given you today's 24 hours, but He has also allowed you to choose how you manage them. With that tremendous gift, it makes no sense not to start off by giving him a portion of it.
Then again, only one of the ten lepers returned to thank the Lord when he healed them in Luke 17. This, I think, reflects who we are sometimes, as there are moments in which we forget, and Jesus chooses to heal us anyway. How merciful is that?
In his phenomenal book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, John Mark Comer writes, “The solution to an overbusy life is not more time. It’s to slow down and simplify our lives around what really matters.” It turns out we do have the time; we’re just building it around the wrong things.
If we continue to live this way, then we rely on too weak scaffolding, and our towers will resemble Babel when they fall.
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I understand I am just as guilty and live in the hustle and bustle of life, but I can testify that this perspective shift will begin to make a difference if we allow it to. It surely has in my own life.
I pray you start crafting your life around God, having him as the foundation, and then finding time for your schedule.
I pray you become the one cleansed leper that comes back to thank Jesus.
I hope you build time in to get what you need to get done and have the most productive of lives, but I pray that starts with first giving the best of your harvest, the best of your time, and the best of you to Jesus.
- Making The Most Of Being Curious
Daniel J. Cuesta
Afterword:
Thank you to Alex Jones for the incredible conversation that has fueled these past few weeks' articles; I am beyond grateful.
If you want to start your schedule right, I recommend trying out Hallow for free over the next 90 days as the season of Lent continues.
Check out the link and draw closer to the Lord, the only one that matters, by beginning and ending with prayer: Hallow
Complete discussion on the DC Youtube channel here: DanielCuesta007
